Even though they're more liberal, standard party rhetoric about Social Security and Medicare just doesn't motivate them.

The president was received warmly when he gave the 2012 commencement address at Barnard College. (Reuters)

The American electorate has undergone fundamental demographic changes over the past 20 years that will continue for the foreseeable future. These changes -- in particular, the growth of the millennial generation -- will result in a significantly different landscape for the two parties in 2024 and have a consequential impact on policy-making and governing.

Some have argued that the growth of groups that are more favorably inclined toward the Democratic Party (nonwhites, millennials, unmarried women, professionals, the nonreligious) will inevitably lead to a long-term Democratic majority. When it comes to millennials, this is true to an extent -- but there are important caveats that make the eventual outcome less certain. Events on the ground matter, and the actions taken by the two parties over the next dozen years will exert a heavy influence over how this group votes in 2024.

In 2008, 48 million millennials (those born between 1978 and 2000) were eligible to vote, and 25 million actually did. By 2020, the first year in which all millennials will be eligible, those numbers will about double, to 90 million and 52 million respectively. Millennials will make up more than 35 percent of the electorate in 2024, up from 20 percent in 2008, and about the same percentage of the electorate currently made up by baby boomers. The 25 million millennials who voted in 2008 went strongly Democratic, giving President Obama 66 percent of their vote and House Democrats nearly as much, at 63 percent.

But this support for Democrats dropped significantly in 2010, to 55 percent. And while other 2008 Obama base groups such as nonwhites and unmarried women have seen their level of support for Obama's re-election return to 2008 levels after a 2010 drop-off, recent polling shows that millennial voters' enthusiasm still lags. Fifty-eight percent of these voters self-identified as Democrats in 2008, but that was down to 50 percent at the end of 2011 -- the largest decline of any age group.

What explains the drop? This group was hit particularly hard by the economic downturn. And while they continue to lean Democratic, their high expectations for Obama combined with a perceived lack of progress on the economy has clearly dented their once overwhelming allegiance to the Democratic Party -- at least temporarily. But how is that likely to change over the next 12 years?

There is little doubt that millennials are generally much friendlier to Democrats than Republicans. They are more likely to identify as liberals and are much less religious than older generations. They hold far more progressive views on social issues. More than 60 percent support gay marriage, and they are much more supportive of legalizing marijuana, promoting racial justice, and restricting guns, among other issues. Just as important, millennials are dramatically more supportive of a larger and more activist government (56 percent support a bigger government with more services, versus 41 percent of all adults), and they show the most support of any age cohort for President Obama's health-care bill, for environmental regulations, and for alternative energy. They are much more supportive of immigration and immigrants, and much less supportive of American exceptionalism in foreign policy.

Not surprisingly, then, while these voters continue to evince some frustration with Democrats and Obama, their view of the Republican Party has soured dramatically since 2010 (going from 38 to 50 percent unfavorable) as the GOP's radical anti-government, anti-gay, anti-contraception Tea Party agenda has come to the fore. Indeed, Pew's excellent survey from late last year on the generation gap shows that millennials overwhelmingly view the GOP as extreme and unconcerned with people like them.

But millennials present some concerns for Democrats over the long term as well. These younger voters are not at all convinced that Social Security and Medicare will be around when they retire and are therefore much more open to making major changes to the entitlement system, including benefit cuts. Clearly, the Democrats' central tactic of 2012 -- tying Republicans to Representative Paul Ryan's very unpopular Medicare overhaul -- is not something Democrats will be doing in 2024 and beyond.

If they want to have any hope of appealing to millennials, Republicans will be forced to moderate their positions on social issues significantly.

So where does that leave the political and policy landscape of 2024? If they want to have any hope of appealing to millennials, Republicans will be forced to moderate their positions on social issues significantly. By 2024, millennials will likely have taken the issue of marriage equality off the table; its ascension in America is inevitable. Similarly, policy proposals like the Blunt Amendment or so-called personhood amendments that would restrict access to contraception will become something close to political suicide. Meanwhile, the prospects for bipartisan immigration reform by 2024 are very strong, as Republicans will also have to moderate their views on immigration to prevent alienating both millennials and the equally fast-growing Hispanic demographic.

But the Democrats will face challenges, too, notably on Social Security and Medicare. By no means do millennials support the kind of dismantling of Medicare and Social Security that House Republicans have proposed; in fact, in a just-released survey from Democracy Corps, only 31 percent of millennials support the new Ryan budget. However, by 2024 Democrats' ability to use cuts to these programs as a political bludgeon will have likely been attenuated. This, in turn, will likely open the door to some significant changes to the entitlement system.

For nearly half a century, the unyielding defense of entitlement programs has been a constant of the Democratic Party. But these demographic shifts will force Democrats to confront a reality in which they can't use Social Security and Medicare as their chief justifications for a more activist government. Their ability to find alternative justifications that speak to the everyday needs of millennials may determine if these voters continue to trend Democratic.

This article originally appeared in Democracy: A Journal of Ideas, an Atlantic partner publication.

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Congressional Republicans and conservative pundits had the chance to signal Trump his attacks on law enforcement are unacceptable—but they sent the opposite message.

President Trump raged at his TV on Sunday morning. And yet on balance, he had a pretty good weekend. He got a measure of revenge upon the hated FBI, firing former Deputy Director Andrew McCabe two days before his pension vested. He successfully coerced his balky attorney general, Jeff Sessions, into speeding up the FBI’s processes to enable the firing before McCabe’s retirement date.

Beyond this vindictive fun for the president, he achieved something politically important. The Trump administration is offering a not very convincing story about the McCabe firing. It is insisting that the decision was taken internally by the Department of Justice, and that the president’s repeated and emphatic demands—public and private—had nothing whatsoever to do with it.

The first female speaker of the House has become the most effec­tive congressional leader of modern times—and, not coinciden­tally, the most vilified.

Last May, TheWashington Post’s James Hohmann noted “an uncovered dynamic” that helped explain the GOP’s failure to repeal Obamacare. Three current Democratic House members had opposed the Affordable Care Act when it first passed. Twelve Democratic House members represent districts that Donald Trump won. Yet none voted for repeal. The “uncovered dynamic,” Hohmann suggested, was Nancy Pelosi’s skill at keeping her party in line.

She’s been keeping it in line for more than a decade. In 2005, George W. Bush launched his second presidential term with an aggressive push to partially privatize Social Security. For nine months, Republicans demanded that Democrats admit the retirement system was in crisis and offer their own program to change it. Pelosi refused. Democratic members of Congress hosted more than 1,000 town-hall meetings to rally opposition to privatization. That fall, Republicans backed down, and Bush’s second term never recovered.

Invented centuries ago in France, the bidet has never taken off in the States. That might be changing.

“It’s been completely Americanized!” my host declares proudly. “The bidet is gone!” In my time as a travel editor, this scenario has become common when touring improvements to hotels and resorts around the world. My heart sinks when I hear it. To me, this doesn’t feel like progress, but prejudice.

Americans seem especially baffled by these basins. Even seasoned American travelers are unsure of their purpose: One globe-trotter asked me, “Why do the bathrooms in this hotel have both toilets and urinals?” And even if they understand the bidet’s function, Americans often fail to see its appeal. Attempts to popularize the bidet in the United States have failed before, but recent efforts continue—and perhaps they might even succeed in bringing this Old World device to new backsides.

As the Trump presidency approaches a troubling tipping point, it’s time to find the right term for what’s happening to democracy.

Here is something that, even on its own, is astonishing: The president of the United States demanded the firing of the former FBI deputy director, a career civil servant, after tormenting him both publicly and privately—and it worked.

The American public still doesn’t know in any detail what Andrew McCabe, who was dismissed late Friday night, is supposed to have done. But citizens can see exactly what Donald Trump did to McCabe. And the president’s actions are corroding the independence that a healthy constitutional democracy needs in its law enforcement and intelligence apparatus.

McCabe’s firing is part of a pattern. It follows the summary removal of the previous FBI director and comes amid Trump’s repeated threats to fire the attorney general, the deputy attorney, and the special counsel who is investigating him and his associates. McCabe’s ouster unfolded against a chaotic political backdrop which includes Trump’s repeated calls for investigations of his political opponents, demands of loyalty from senior law enforcement officials, and declarations that the job of those officials is to protect him from investigation.

How evangelicals, once culturally confident, became an anxious minority seeking political protection from the least traditionally religious president in living memory

One of the most extraordinary things about our current politics—really, one of the most extraordinary developments of recent political history—is the loyal adherence of religious conservatives to Donald Trump. The president won four-fifths of the votes of white evangelical Christians. This was a higher level of support than either Ronald Reagan or George W. Bush, an outspoken evangelical himself, ever received.

Trump’s background and beliefs could hardly be more incompatible with traditional Christian models of life and leadership. Trump’s past political stances (he once supported the right to partial-birth abortion), his character (he has bragged about sexually assaulting women), and even his language (he introduced the words pussy and shithole into presidential discourse) would more naturally lead religious conservatives toward exorcism than alliance. This is a man who has cruelly publicized his infidelities, made disturbing sexual comments about his elder daughter, and boasted about the size of his penis on the debate stage. His lawyer reportedly arranged a $130,000 payment to a porn star to dissuade her from disclosing an alleged affair. Yet religious conservatives who once blanched at PG-13 public standards now yawn at such NC-17 maneuvers. We are a long way from The Book of Virtues.

Much more than time separates the 27th president from the 45th: from their vastly different views on economics, to their conceptions of the presidency itself.

As Donald Trump’s executive orders punishing steel and aluminum imports threaten a trade war around the globe, Republicans on Capitol Hill are debating whether to reassert Congress’s ultimate constitutional authority over tariffs and trade. This isn’t the first time the GOP has split itself in two on the question of protective tariffs. But the last time, just over 100 years ago, the Republican president’s policies were the exact opposite of Trump’s.

William Howard Taft—in his opposition to populism and protectionism, as well as his devotion to constitutional limits on the powers of the presidency—was essentially the anti-Trump. Unlike the current president, and his own predecessor, Theodore Roosevelt, Taft refused to rule by executive order, insisting that the chief executive could only exercise those powers that the Constitution explicitly authorizes.

Among the more practical advice that can be offered to international travelers is wisdom of the bathroom. So let me say, as someone who recently returned from China, that you should be prepared to one, carry your own toilet paper and two, practice your squat.

I do not mean those goofy chairless sits you see at the gym. No, toned glutes will not save you here. I mean the deep squat, where you plop your butt down as far as it can go while staying aloft and balanced on the heels. This position—in contrast to deep squatting on your toes as most Americans naturally attempt instead—is so stable that people in China can hold it for minutes and perhaps even hours ...

The debate around sexual-harassment legislation is playing out in the Maryland General Assembly, where reform advocates say leadership is loath to embrace changes.

In Maryland, legislative sessions run 90 days, from January through early April. On the final day of each session—commonly referred to by the Latin term sine die—the capital city of Annapolis lets its hair down. There is dining and dancing and parties galore as aides, lawmakers, and lobbyists celebrate having survived the season.

A few years back, at one sine die soiree hosted by a legislator, a former Annapolis aide (who requested anonymity because she remains involved in Maryland politics) took to the dance floor. “I was dancing a little bit by myself,” she recalled. “All of a sudden I hear, ‘You’re packing a little bit more than I thought back here!’ I turn around, and this legislator is dancing right behind me. I was like, ‘Ooookay. This is a little weird. I know your wife and kids.’ So I tried to subtly move away.” The legislator followed, recalled the ex-aide. And then: “He got aroused.” The young woman made a swift escape, and, she informed me, “I have not spoken to that legislator one-on-one since.”

Scholars have been sounding the alarm about data-harvesting firms for nearly a decade. The latest Cambridge Analytica scandal shows it may be too late to stop them.

On Friday night, Facebook suspended the account of Cambridge Analytica, the political-data company backed by the billionaire Robert Mercer that consulted on both the Brexit and Trump campaigns.

The action came just before The Guardian and The New York Timesdropped major reports in which the whistle-blower Christopher Wylie alleged that Cambridge Analytica had used data that an academic had allegedly improperly exfiltrated from the social network. These new stories, backed by Wylie’s account and internal documents, followed years of reporting by The Guardianand The Intercept about the possible problem.

The details could seem Byzantine. Aleksandr Kogan, then a Cambridge academic, founded a company, Global Science Research, and immediately took on a major client, Strategic Communication Laboratories, which eventually gave birth to Cambridge Analytica. (Steve Bannon, an adviser to the company and a former senior adviser to Trump, reportedly picked the name.)

The Supreme Court will consider the rights of crisis pregnancy centers, which help women “imagine what the choice of life would be like.”

Abortion is back in the Supreme Court this week. On Tuesday, the justices will hear a case on crisis pregnancy centers, the facilities established by pro-life organizations around the country to counsel women against abortion. In 2015, California passed the Reproductive FACT Act, requiring licensed clinics that provide certain services—including ultrasounds, pregnancy tests, and advice on birth control—to post information about affordable abortion and contraception services offered by the state. Unlicensed facilities that provide these services have to disclose their lack of medical certification. A network of crisis pregnancy centers, including the National Institute of Family and Life Advocates (NIFLA), sued in response, arguing that the government is violating their right to free speech by forcing them to promote abortion.